Light Raises $25 Million To Put A DSLR-Quality Camera In Your Next Smartphone

Our phones have turned everyone into a photographer and laid waste to a huge portion of the camera market. But even though we use our phones these days to take all of our pictures, the cameras in our phones still can't compare to something like a $2,000 DSLR camera.

A Palo Alto-based startup called Light is looking to change that. Light has developed camera technology for phone makers that will allow their devices to do true optical zoom, have good low-light performance and get high-resolution photos that are on par with DSLR cameras.

On Thursday, Light announced a $25 million Series B investment. The round was led by Formation 8 under the venture capital firm's new hardware fund run by Lior Susan. The round also received contributions from StepStone Group LP, Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV, Foxconn's FIH Mobile, GlobalFoundries CEO Sanjay Jha and CrunchFund. This brings Light's total funding to around $35 million.

Light has already built prototypes of what the camera will look like on phones. Now, the startup will be using the new cash to ramp up production of its camera modules to get them ready to ship in the kind of volumes phone makers expect. Light is working with Chinese manufacturer Sunny Optical to build up this manufacturing capability.

The way Light's camera technology works is by placing multiple cameras on the back of a phone -- around 6 or 11 cameras. Light stitches together all those images with its software to come out with high-resolution photos. Depending on how many cameras the phone maker chooses, it can achieve between 32 megapixels and 52 megapixels.

Light's cameras can also zoom using what's called folded optics, which is a method of bending light to make the camera's size requirements more compact. Light can zoom between 70 millimeter and 150mm.

The Light module is paired with a Snapdragon application processor from Qualcomm.

The setup will add some bulk to a phone. Light CEO and cofounder Dave Grannan said that the camera easily fits into larger phones like, for example, Apple's iPhone 6+.

The build of material costs will be at least $60 for phone makers to add Light's technology, but Grannan points out that that's nothing compared to having to shell out $2,000 for a nice DSLR camera. "The value creation is tremendous," he said.

For Android phone makers in particular, it's becoming extremely hard to stand out in such a crowded phone market. Prices keep coming down to stay competitive, but that's eating away profit margins into nothing.

"The Android market is really in a race to the bottom," said Grannan. "This is a chance for phone makers to retain greater margin and not to compete exclusively on price."

We'll have to wait and see which phone makers decide to adopt the technology. One big advantage Light has is that one of its investors is contract manufacturer Foxconn, which makes Apple's iPhones. Foxconn came in as a strategic investor and the two companies have worked out a deal for Foxconn to resell Light's camera technology to any of Foxconn's customers. Foxconn can also adapt the camera technology for its own branded phones it sells in Asia.

Light's two cofounders are entrenched in the phone world. Grannan held jobs at Sprint and Nokia. Cofounder and CTO Rajiv Laroia was previously the CTO of Flarion Technologies, which was acquired by Qualcomm and developed some of the foundational technology for LTE cellular communication.

Light expects the first phones to come out with its camera will be in 2016.

“Our smartphones have gotten great, but the last hurdle is professional camera quality photos. That’s where the smartphone fails,” said Grannan.

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I'm a San Francisco-based staff writer at Forbes. I cover chips and AI. Email me story tips or comments at atilley@forbes.com. Follow me on Twitter @aatilley. Click here for details on how to send me information anonymously....